Page 30 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

“Cole, get the fuck away from him,” Mari said, her voice deadly low. Something in the tone made Cole’s spine straighten. He took half a step toward her, maybe on reflex, but it still hit Brennan like a stab in the gut.

“Listen, Mari—”

“Don’t say my name, you literal fucking freak. Back up!”

“Freak” stung.

“Mar, take a few deep breaths, okay?” Cole said, but it was meek. He was shrinking into himself. “I feel like you’re lashing out unfairly.”

“I am lashing out in a perfectly fucking rational way!”

“What are you even doing here?” Brennan asked.

Mari flushed red, embarrassment mixing with anger. Which meant the answer was probably Tony. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is, as Cole’s best friend, it’s my responsibility to make sure his crushes aren’t serial killers, so it’s my job to check their rooms for dead bodies—”

“Oh, my god, Mari—”

“But then it was like, who the hell has a locked freezer hidden in their closet ? And, who the hell has a stockpile of human blood in their closet?”

Fuck. Shit. Mari’s eyes were a dangerous blaze, daring him to try to lie his way out of it. And Cole stood halfway between the two of them, head down, shoulders drooped, infuriatingly silent.

“I know it looks, uh, not good,” Brennan tried. “But I have a valid explanation for—”

“But then I realized,” Mari interrupted loudly. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care!” She took a step forward, thumb poised over the pepper spray’s trigger. “I want you to stay away from me, and my friends.”

She reached for Cole and pulled him by the hand toward her, stepping protectively in front of him with the pepper spray shielding them both. Worse, Cole went without protest, head still down, unreadable.

“I’m a vampire,” Brennan blurted. Then shoved his hands over his ears as if he could shut out the response. Shit. Fuck.

Mari was stock-still. “Sorry. What?”

“I know how it sounds,” Brennan said, forcing every ounce of desperate honesty into the words, needing her to believe it. “But it’s true. It’s new. I got hit by a car and a vampire turned me, and now I need blood to survive.”

“Okay,” Mari said, voice low, nodding slowly. Then, “You’re delusional.”

Brennan squeezed his eyes shut. “Fair enough,” he said. “I would think the same, if it weren’t happening to me.”

Cole’s voice was quiet but clear. “It’s true.” He still wouldn’t look up from the floorboards.

Mari whirled around toward him, taking her eyes off Brennan for the first time since they’d arrived. “What the fuck are you talking about, Cole?”

“It’s true,” Cole repeated. “He’s a vampire. But he isn’t hurting anybody—”

“You knew about this?” Mari demanded, gesturing to the pile of blood, some stolen from the school, most from the vampires’ blood drive.

“Maybe we can just,” Cole said, “um, sit down and have a conversation about—”

“Um, this is not a sit-down-and-talk situation,” Mari said. Cole sank further into himself at the dismissal. Mari turned back to Brennan. “If what you’re saying is true, this is a fucking priest situation. More likely, it’s a situation for antipsychotics. You need fucking help.”

“I wish antipsychotics would help!” Brennan said. “But I need blood. Animals don’t cut it.”

“He took from the blood drive,” Cole added, not helpfully.

Mari glanced back and forth between them for a long time while Brennan dared to hope with bated breath and Cole continued to study the floor like he was going to be tested on it.

Brennan watched the expressions pass over Mari’s face, the tentative realization that they were being serious, that this was a possibility.

“And you saw,” Mari finished, to Cole. He nodded, damp and deflated, and she went quiet for a minute. “Oh my god. Cole, are you bleeding?”

At the curve of his neck was the tiniest smear of blood from where Brennan’s fang had pricked him before he could pull away. It was barely anything, but he was still bleeding, and Brennan had still been the cause of it.

“It was an accident,” Brennan started to defend himself, but it came out weak. What difference did that make? Cole was hurt, and it was his fault.

“Oh my god,” Mari said. “And now that girl is missing. Did you hurt her?”

“No,” Brennan said, barely a whisper. Because even if he hadn’t, another vampire had.

“He wouldn’t,” Cole said.

Wouldn’t he? He’d hurt Cole, after all. How was he any different from Dom?

“Do you even hear yourself?” Mari pressed her lips together for a long moment. She shook her head at Cole with what could only be described as pity. “You’re doing it again, Cole,” she said coldly. “Taking in strays because you feel guilty about Noah.”

Cole recoiled like she’d physically slapped him, and Mari marched up to Brennan to stick a finger at his nose with her free hand while the other still brandished the pepper spray.

“And you,” she said. “Stay away from me, stay away from Cole, stay away from Tony. Get a new lease, transfer universities, flee the country, I don’t give a shit. If I see you again, I’ll find the closest thing to Buffy the goddamn Vampire Slayer we have in this world and send them your way.”

She pushed past Brennan to get out the doorway and left Cole standing in the entryway with Brennan, head hanging low.

She stopped outside and held out a hand like an owner calling a dog. “Cole, come on.”

Worse, Cole went. Didn’t even look Brennan in the eyes.

The door slammed shut behind them, leaving Brennan with the mess.

Mari was right. He was a freak. A monster. He was stupid to get caught up in a fantasy of normalcy with Cole, when he couldn’t even kiss Cole without drawing blood. He’d let himself get distracted, and now he was facing the consequences.

First, he would need to clean up the blood.

He wished, more than anything, that he could collapse in his bed and sleep, but in addition to being an immortal being who was incapable of sleep, he turned on the lights of his bedroom to find his bed occupied.

“Fucking shit, Dom!” Brennan shouted, nearly dropping the pouch of blood he was sipping through a straw like a Capri-Sun. It tasted better that way, okay?

“That sounded brutal,” said Dom, reclining on her elbows at the edge of Brennan’s bed, arching an eyebrow as if she was the offended party here.

She was wearing all black again, her hair cropped short and dyed that inky black.

Whatever Goth moment she’d been working up to in the past months was in full swing.

“Keeping a secret’s not so fun when it bites you in the ass, huh? ”

“What are you doing in here?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” Dom said, smiling coyly. Brennan recognized vodka on her breath.

“You could have texted,” Brennan said. He was not in the mood for this. His hair was still wet. He still reeked of chlorine. He still felt Cole’s kiss on his lips, his nose nudging Brennan’s. Fuck.

“I wanted to talk in person.”

“I’m not in the mood. Besides, we’re seeing each other in a few weeks with Sunny and Nellie—”

“I wanted to talk without Sunny and Nellie.”

“Well, you could have at least had the lights on and not given me a goddamn heart attack.”

“Noted for next time,” Dom said.

Brennan desperately wanted to discourage a next time. He didn’t need another reminder of all the ways he was a monster.

“Why did you come here, Dom?” Brennan asked, and even to his own ears he sounded exhausted.

“Haven’t you heard the good news?” Dom deadpanned. “Evelyn’s disappearance is no longer under investigation. Like it never even happened! Isn’t that great?” She let out a dry, humorless laugh.

Brennan’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Dom gave a cruel, wry smile. “Wow. I almost forgot what a complete bag of dicks you are.”

“What do you want me to say? Congrats on getting away with murder and thanks for stopping by?”

“My sister died, you heartless fuck. She was the only good thing in my life and she’s gone. Even her memory is gone.” She stood abruptly, swaying drunkenly into Brennan’s space as she lilted toward the window rather than the door. “I don’t know why I came here. Stupid idea.”

“Wait,” Brennan said, stepping in front of her and scrubbing a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. Just—say what you came here to say.”

Dom frowned, thoughtful, pale, and gaunt. She looked, for all intents and purposes, like a vampire.

“I don’t know if I can keep pretending,” she said. “Playing at human when I’m not.”

“Okay,” Brennan said, low. “Talk to Nellie. You can transfer or something. I’m sure there’s a pamphlet about it.”

“No, listen. You’re holding on so hard to the things that make you human, but for me—that was Evelyn.

And if Evelyn’s gone, so am I. My old life doesn’t matter.

The shitty job, the shitty parents, the shitty apartment.

” She seemed to be realizing it as she was saying it, and laughed, childishly incredulous. “I can do whatever I want now.”

Something dark swirled in Brennan’s stomach. “And what is it you want?”

“I don’t know. But I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to ever feel powerless again.”

The dark thing in the pit of Brennan’s stomach turned cold and solid. This time, when Dom moved to leave, Brennan let her.

“Dom.” Brennan’s fingers shook, squeezing around the blood packet.

Dom turned her head to look at him over her shoulder, the moonlit window lighting up her profile, an icy expression on her shadowed face.

Brennan swallowed hard. “Don’t come back here,” he said.

Dom’s face shuttered, hard and stony, mouth set in a line. She huffed a cold scoff and turned back toward the window.

“Keep pretending, if you want. I’ll do what I have to do to get by. Like I always have.”

She was disappointed, he realized. She had wanted him to understand. Maybe even expected him to.

She ducked through the window, sliding it shut behind her. She moved so quietly, with hunter-light footsteps, that Brennan could barely hear her exit.